English Dub Review: 18if “THRESHOLD”

I was honestly expecting to hear some Beck in this episode.

Overview (It might spoil something, baaa)

Haruto encounters a new witch, or is it witches? One is strong willed, and angry nobody takes the time to understand her. The other is gentle and loving, but Haruto can’t hear anything when she’s around. Dr. Kats makes a startling discovery in the real world: Both witches are the same person, and that person is a deaf singer. She teaches Haruto a bit about his reasons for being trapped in the Dream World and opens his heart to new possibilities.

I liked this episode. There was a bunch of stuff that was difficult to piece together, but I liked it. I had assumed in the last episode that we may start to break into a real plot here since it ended with a note that suggested real world violence. We do have an advancement of the plot here, but not in the same way. Instead of generating an arc to follow, this episode addresses the underlying issue that we’ve come to just accept and ignore. Why is Haruto stuck here? In the game, this isn’t even a topic. Haruto bounces back and forth between the Dream World and reality in the mobile game. It isn’t a mechanic in the game, but it is a minor part of the plot. Being stuck is original to the anime, and it seems to work well for the story it is telling. In its essence, this show is like The Twilight Zone, dealing with various stories that have nothing to do with each other. The environs are trippy, and each episode is different in some way. Here, everything is subtitled (In Japanese, so I can’t read it). It’s an interesting visual effect, with words appearing as the characters say them, and lines only disappearing when their thoughts have been completed. This makes sense in Sono’s Realm, as she admits to wishing all her anime were subtitled.

The writers use Haruto as the thread that binds these disparate stories together. His journey to help these girls is treated as a simply heroic act in the game, but in the show, his motivations are a bit more complicated. He wants to leave the Dream World, but can’t figure out how. Since he can’t help himself, he instead helps others. So… like Quantum Leap, only with psychological journeys instead of time travel. Haruto, however, is not a guy with it all together. Self-deprecation haunts him, and he is unable to accept praise. If one of the psychedelic sequences can be believed, it seems a lifetime of people looking down on him has permanently damaged his perception of himself. Because of this, he has an easier time accepting people who have negative feelings, because that is what he is used to. But when people approach him with kindness, he can’t understand it. Despite being kind himself, Haruto won’t allow kindness to touch him. He doesn’t even realize this is true.

Courtesy: Funimation

The other topic of this episode is that of deaf and mute people. This is a difficult disability to live with, but not because it prevents you from reaching any of your needs or goals. This is a disability that makes it difficult for people to understand you, and you them. This is demonstrated through the show, as people routinely give up on communicating with Sono, and become frustrated with her. My sister is partially deaf. She can speak just fine, and hear that things happen around her, but has difficulty making out speech. It’s why she doesn’t watch anime with me. What this means is repeating what you say, enunciating, and making sure I face her when I talk. This can be real frustrating for people who don’t try to see things from her perspective. It gets even worse for those who are fully deaf or mute. They have to speak an entirely different language, a visual one. Those that don’t know the language are often times completely confused by what they are seeing.

Oh, and that confusion and frustration you’re feeling? They see that. Sign language has facial expression and body language woven into it. The show mentions a study on communication, but Eddie Izzard put it a bit better. Communication is 70% how you look, 20% how you sound, and 10% what you’re actually saying. So, these people, who have trained themselves to communicate through a visual medium, can see some of what you are feeling. As you give up on them, it hurts. On the other hand, the effort you put into talking with them is worth double. At one of my previous jobs, one section gained a deaf coworker. The entire section decided to learn sign language, just so they could work better with her. It wasn’t mandated, or even encouraged by their boss. They did it because they wanted to. It meant the world to her, and inspired other sections to do the same. According to some translators I’ve talked to, just learning the signs for “Hello” and “How can I help you?” go so far with them.

Our Take

This episode had lots of ups and downs with its writing, but its downs were understandable. Here, the writers were trying to tell a bit more about Haruto, but were limited. They didn’t want to show a flashback, but couldn’t have him step out of the Dream World. So, if you still want to show, don’t tell, how do you do it? Well, here, they use trippy psychedelic sequences. Add to that the habit this show makes of blurring the lines between different locations in the Dream World, and it gets pretty hard to tell what is going on. Sometimes, it’s a transition to a different area. Others, it’s a separate dream entirely. Then again, you could be looking at the dreams out of order, or from a different perspective. Since the show is always changing up its visual and narrative language, just about everything is up to interpretation.

In this episode, it turned the mirror around on Haruto, revealing things about him that we couldn’t have gotten before. While you have to interpret this information, this also forces the viewer to try and understand what is being said. Because you now have to pass his experiences through your own perspective, it connects his story with yours. Unfortunately, if you can’t figure it out… you’re just out in the cold.

Visually, I wish more episodes had the love and care that the previous one had. The whole show could be great if it just took the time to make sure its key animators got their game on point. So many shots have odd distortions, even in the real world scenes, that make characters look wonky and amateurish. When I noticed that Sono was speaking in sign, I was looking forward to it truly expressing the language. However, the animation was so clumsy, it lacked the crispness of form that I have seen in signers. And the audible singer beside her never even moved her mouth. It just stayed open through the whole song. Why even do this episode if you weren’t going to commit to presenting it well? That being said, the sequences in the Dream World, though mostly just talking, looked very good. The backgrounds were artful, and well drawn.

When you put it all together, this episode is like a burrito with a soggy tortilla. It’s got so much great content, but the wrapper is sub-par and everything is falling out. So much flavor, but if you lose grasp on it, you don’t get any of it. Dang it. Now I want a burrito. Well, I’ll give this episode seven burritos out of ten.

 

SCORE
7.0/10